SEC与CFTC强势碾压

Welcome back to Marketbubble, a show all about investing in yourself, where we feel an overwhelming majority of the young men today are in a losing position. Find out how we're positioned today and every Thursday live on twitch.tv/fazebanks as well as kick.tv/ansom. We're on Twitch, Kick, Twitter, and all over the place. Somebody said, "Is this pre-recorded?" No, it's not pre-recorded. This is good. It's an easy episode. It might be a little scuffed and a little chopped; we've been so fucking busy, brother.

We're in person together today, ladies and gentlemen. We're in New York City. Typically, we do this remotely—I'm usually in L.A., and he's in New York—so technically, right now it's 4:30. It's an easy episode. It might be a little scuffed and a little chopped; we've been so fucking busy, brother.

Yeah, they have no idea.

They really have no idea.

They have no idea. They're about to find out, though.

It's all good. Everything's great. The market's fucking been nuts the last 60 days, we'll call it. If I could clone myself 25 times, it'd be a great time to be able to do that. Unfortunately, I can't, but we've been spread super thin. We wouldn't miss an episode.

I'm in New York. He's obviously also here. We have a show planned for you guys. We're going to do our hour, and then who do we have today?

The Long.xyz founder, and we got Malik Jackson, Super Bowl champion.

The Long.xyz founder, I think, is on FOMO, up 7 figures on this AI trade. The SEC shit just happened this morning. Without further ado, let's get cracking.

What are some Ansem updates? Give us a little bit of an update.

We got both. Let's go. I have a ton of Ansem updates. I've been iterating a lot behind the scenes on Ansem.io and the different things that I'm building around it.

The initial version of it was kind of like a launchpad layer, like an index for on-chain coins, but there have been some different changes that we're making to it. The updates for that will be out soon. I'm doing a lot of stuff with Market Bubble, Bullpen stuff, and that as well. It's kind of like 3 different things running in parallel, but all are going to be value-accretive to Ansem. I'll have more information on that out soon, probably at the beginning of next week.

Essentially, one of the issues I've had with the current structure of Ansem.io is the way that coins launch there. It's really easy for them to be sniped, and we're fixing a lot of that. I'll give more information on it soon. I don't want to leak anything crazy, but I'll have more information on it soon.

What impact is this new CFTC no-action letter having on DeFi front ends and markets? CFTC—what do you think about it?

Yeah, it's huge. The CFTC essentially said that they're taking no action against software—DeFi software—that enables on-chain activity for different things, which is huge. A lot of the issues we've had in the past are that DeFi front ends get sued, DeFi founders are afraid to enable X, Y, and Z, and a lot of the protocols have to be careful about who they allow to use their products.

This essentially says that software is good to navigate the on-chain landscape however users feel necessary, and the developers won't be blamed directly for how their software is used, which is great. It seems like the U.S. is shifting a lot more positively on crypto in general because I think they realize how much of a benefit it's going to be to us as a country if stablecoins are used a ton on-chain.

The dollar would be a lot stronger if these stablecoins, which are backed by U.S. dollars, had a ton more activity globally in places where they wouldn't usually have that activity. The CFTC stuff is huge. It also comes at the same time that Hyperliquid got legalized in the U.S., and Kraken is the exchange that's allowing that to happen. Hyperliquid's partnership with them is also happening at the same time.

It's really great for crypto in general. I think we're shifting away from the negative stigma that has been on crypto in the past.

You low-key called that partnership as well. There's a tweet somewhere on Market Bubble, but I think very early in the show—

Yeah, a few weeks ago.

I think it was even longer than that. I think it was months ago, to be honest. I don't know where it is, but somewhere. Pull it up.

Ansem, the SEC just green-lit tokenized U.S. stocks on-chain with a 5-year exemption. Talk to us about it.

Huge, man. The issue we've currently had with tokenized stocks is that they were not designated for U.S. users or for people in other countries, and the SEC today just announced that there is going to be an innovation exemption for these stocks and how they can be used on-chain. I think you can see generally that the regulatory environment is changing a lot for crypto. Vlad has spoken a lot about this over the past few weeks, essentially saying that people will be able to redeem, in kind, the tokenized stocks for actual stocks, like how they hold them with their brokerages, and also be able to exercise whatever shareholder rights you have as a shareholder of these stocks—the same way you would be permitted to do if you're holding these tokenized stocks on-chain.

I think you're going to see a lot more developers get interested in building products around these tokenized stocks and a lot more on-chain activity. It's going to happen all in this area.

Bro's doing God's work.

He's doing God's work.

Is Vlad 1 of the greatest main characters crypto has ever seen, by the way? Because last year we had Michael Saylor—or last cycle we had Michael Saylor, right? The cycle before that we had FTX and SBF.

SBF. Crazy, bro.

Vlad's the GOAT, bro. Vlad's goated. What do you think about Vlad Tenev as kind of the face of this industry at this point? I feel like he's taken the role of the face of this industry. What do you think about that? Where do you— I personally can't see any outcome where things go poorly. Robinhood is such a sound, solid product. They obviously have an incredible team, and I think he has an incredible head on his shoulders.

It's all pretty in line with how he's busting through walls in terms of how America and the SEC are going to engage with tokenized stocks and things like that. Talk to us about that, maybe.

Yeah. He's definitely been a great main character. I think it's actually been surprising for a lot of crypto people because Robinhood and crypto, in crypto natives' eyes, has not been the best over the past few years. As we know, in 2023, when Solana was dealing with other issues—whether it was a security or not, and all that—Robinhood was actually one of the exchanges that delisted Solana when they didn't have clarity there.

During the GameStop saga, they halted trading of GME because of a few different things happening on their platform with the volatility and everything else. People have seen them in a gray area in terms of how they represent retail. I think Vlad has taken that chip on his shoulder and spoken really aggressively toward the crypto ethos of giving everyone access to all of these assets—whether they're stocks and you don't live in the U.S., or whether they're on-chain coins or on-chain protocols.

They've been really bullish on the tokenization of real-world assets, which is a huge narrative for crypto. As we know, as a U.S. citizen, it's very easy for us to access all these stocks through our brokerages. But if you don't live in the U.S., it's a bit more difficult for you to get access to these things. The tokenization of these stocks and other RWAs, or real-world assets, allows people to get access to all these things really easily and instantly if they have a crypto wallet—not just one whole share of these stocks, but also fractionalized versions of these shares.

I think if you're going to be the one that expands the pie, it also shows how crypto can benefit the existing traditional financial system, which has been unclear to a lot of people. Crypto is seen as a scam in the eyes of a lot of the tradfi guys. But now, with Vlad speaking so clearly on how crypto provides value and them still being able to operate their regular brokerage business in addition to their L2 blockchain, I think it's changing the perception.

I think it's pretty cool. He's been on record saying, "We're going into a supercycle on-chain right now," and they're leading the way for that. So it's definitely been surprising for me and some other crypto natives, but they're doing a great job.

That's why I say things like he's doing God's work. I think Robinhood has an incredible brand. It's obviously a $100 billion company. It's obviously one of the most relevant and biggest financial platforms in the modern day. Before this, 40 days ago, it wasn't really seen as a crypto app at all. Vlad wasn't as outspoken or as engaged with blockchain and crypto as he is now.

He came out of the gate. We actually had a little bit of a bearish—not bearish, but just a little bit of a snooze kind of take on them out of the gate because we expected them to be just like everybody else: "Okay, this is just a vertical that they're going to cover. They're going to introduce Robinhood Chain, but probably not take it really that seriously. It's probably not going to work its way to the forefront of their existing product and brand."

They've been going hard.

They've been going nuts. They've been going nuts. I think it's because they realize how much money they're leaving on the table. Robinhood makes, I think, $4.5 billion a year from their traditional business, and they're realizing that crypto can add an entirely new real-revenue business line to their existing products in a way that they don't currently have exposure to.

The one thing about crypto is the ability to capture value there if you provide value for users. It's crazy because of how aggressive the speculation is and how aggressive the trading volume is with everything on-chain. People are willing to spend money on front ends. I think trading terminals and launchpads make so much money because they're able to take such a high fee rate on all this trading volume.

The reason they're able to take such a high fee rate is because people are willing to speculate on these things. They think they can get 1,000x-plus returns, and that only really exists in crypto in such a short period of time. I think Vlad has realized that if they're able to participate in and enable some of that speculation while still keeping their distance—not directly calling out certain things, but just allowing their infrastructure to benefit from all that activity—then they can make a lot more money as a company.

It also aligns with their core ethos as Robinhood, as a business.

Do you think the market overreacted to the CLARITY Act? Obviously, the CLARITY Act didn't get passed. What are your opinions on that, and do you think the market overreacted to it?

Honestly, we didn't really go down that much, to be honest. I think the CLARITY Act getting denied is obviously not the best for crypto, but it seems like that bad news is already priced in. When you have bad news and the price doesn't react that poorly to it, that's typically a sign that we're skewed to the upside because there are a ton more people sidelined who still don't have positions.

The people reacting to that bad news and selling aren't impacting price action at all. Zcash is up, I think, 20% since the CLARITY Act got denied.

Zcash is crushing. It's looking like the second coming of Bitcoin. What do you think about Zcash? Talk to us about Zcash.

Yeah. I feel like I give the Zcash shill every episode on this show. We've been calling this shit since it was at $300 or whatever it was. It's at $1,500 now, so it's a 5x since I mentioned it on the show.

And this isn't low-cap shit, man. This is—what's it at right now, $22B or something? Yeah, like that. Yeah, $22B market cap.

I said it in the last episode. When I first joined crypto in 2017, the first time I bought Bitcoin, it was around $3,000. At the beginning of 2017, Bitcoin was around $1,000. It ended 2017 at $20,000 before topping and selling off the next year.

Zcash is in a very similar spot, where it's getting consensus from your OG crypto people and your new people getting into crypto. The thesis of a provably private store of value is just so easy for everybody to understand. So it gets memed, I think, in a way, and there's no execution risk or applications that need to be built on the chain. It's really a pure play in crypto. It's just the store-of-value play.

Bitcoin is already at $1.5T or whatever it is. I think Zcash getting to 10% of that makes sense to me as a private version of Bitcoin. I think everybody else kind of sees that trade making a ton of sense. It's like, okay, if Bitcoin can get to $1T-plus, why can't Zcash get to that same kind of value?

So, yeah, I think this year and next year are going to be really, really good for Zcash.

I’m up a smooth 6 figures on it.

Appreciate you.

I’m a viewer first of the show, and it’s awesome.

Will Zcash reach $2,000 by December 31? What do you think about this? It’s at 15%, bro. It was like a 30% move. It’s at $1,500 right now.

I think for sure.

Yeah, for sure.

I think you slam yes on this, to be honest. I think you slam yes.

It’s at a coin flip, which is nuts.

What’s the other one we talked about in the first episode? Anthropic.

The market’s pretty big, too. It’s $600,000.

Anthropic and Bitcoin. That was a good one. Remember our first episode: Anthropic or Bitcoin—which one is going to be higher?

It’s still only at 25%.

Okay, yeah. This, bro, was at like 13%.

That bottom tick is where we called it, by the way. Deadass, bro.

That bottom tick was at—what was it at when we called it?

I think it was lower than that.

It might have been lower than that. Yeah, it might have.

Is there a way to zoom out farther on this chart?

I think it was literally broken. We called it at like 20% or something.

Yeah, it literally won’t let us go that far.

Yeah, that was a great call. Shout-out to Polymarket.

Great call.

Because I don’t know where else you can even take this trade. It’s really hard to buy Anthropic. This is why Polymarket is a phenomenal product and absolutely needed, because speculation is the future. Trading is the future. We all fucking know it. This is the kind of shit that we need to be able to trade.

Yeah, there’s literally nowhere else you could capitalize on this opportunity.

Even just your Robinhood shout—you know so much about what’s happening on-chain that you knew they were going to overperform as far as earnings. They were going to blow earnings out of the water because of how you interpret and study the market. It was really easy for you to make that call. It had a fucking 20% move the next day after you called buying it.

It’s just like, I don’t know. We’re seeing things from a very unique perspective.

He’s absolutely killing it.

Crushing it.

One of the producers on the show posted this—Michael Cat. He’s on set today. He’s always here, 20 feet from my apartment. Look at this.

He’s always here.

Look at this. Peep this. Look at this. He’s always here.

Can’t get rid of him.

How much is Ansem’s account worth? This is some random social product. We’ve seen a million of these. I’m not sure whether or not it’s a legitimate, valid product. It seems fine. But this wheatpaste got me next to Zoran.

Yeah, it’s Ansem and Zoran.

Dude, that’s hilarious. Somebody peeled it off. That’s crazy.

Oh my God.

Was this just a different day? Was—

Next day.

Next day. That’s so funny.

It’s fucking insane.

They left you alone, though. I’m curious what you think. What do you think your Twitter account is worth?

How much would you sell your Twitter account for?

Sell it like I can never tweet again?

Like I can never tweet again? Wait, wait, wait. Sell the account and I can never do it again, or sell the account and I can tweet on another account?

Realistically, I think it would probably behave the same way a fucking acquisition of a business would behave. Anybody who would come in and buy your Twitter account would probably lock you in for the next 5 years—keep tweeting, keep doing this. They would figure out a way to monetize it, whatever.

As if you were to sell a business. Treat it like a business that you’re the founder and sole owner of. How much would that business be worth? Probably like Coinbase comes in. Brian Armstrong’s like, “We want to buy it. We just want to acquire you—the person—”

“And everything involved.”

And everything involved.

Probably like $200 million.

Hey, I like it. I think $200 million.

I think higher. I honestly think higher. But yeah, it’s at least $100 million. It’s got to be worth $100 million, bro. Just think about it. There are coins running on-chain every fucking day going to $100 million.

That’s fact.

Surely. Surely, that is a fact. It’s got to be worth that.

A billion. Somebody said a billion. Shout-out—yeah, a billion.

We could definitely get it there.

I mean, how many coins have we run from 0 to $100 million-plus?

A lot.

A lot. A lot.

Come on set real quick, Justin. It’s fun. It’s funny.

Come here.

Justin Staple, everybody.

How are you?

Good.

What’s up, boys?

It’s good, G. How are you guys? This is Justin Staple. Justin Staple is the guy who did the FaZe ESPN 30 for 30. He also just did the most recent Kanye documentary, and I got him and a crew in New York this week. I’m like, “Yo, just pull up.” I want to start documenting this because I really do believe this whole trading thing—the future of social trading, all this stock-perp shit, the Vlad, this era that we’re living in—is a moment in time. It truly is.

I think there are teams that are building the next Facebooks. I think there are traders—the new celebrities: the Kimchis, the Rowdies, the Rasmers. I just want to capture as much of this as humanly possible. They’re here on set today.

I fucking hate traditional production. I hate people like Justin, in my experience. Most people like Justin—I don’t love. But they came and they did it. When it came out and premiered, I watched it. I’m like, “Wow, they really did my brand and my story justice.” That’s where we connected. Then I went to that Kanye premiere, and you tapped me on the shoulder like, “Hey, man, how’ve you been?” I was like, “Oh, you’re doing this, too? Makes sense.”

Dude’s a fucking Chad. He’s a beast, and he knows a lot about the market as well. So he’s the guy to do it on some Market Bubble media shit. It’s just little things like this that show how Z and I plan to scale out of this individual show. I know it’s candid, and I know it’s crazy, but they’re here right now. Come on, too, just so people can see. It’s fun. It’s cool.

We’ve got Michael Rogers, the camera guy. He’s walking around filming us with gimbals all week. They just got here. They’re getting some camera behind-the-scenes footage.

Robinhood’s on pace to generate $1 billion in revenue just on their chain alone.

Yeah.

It wasn’t priced in. How do you think it’ll impact their stock? Where do you think HOOD’s going? It’s trading at what, $90 billion to $100 billion right now? Where do you think we’re headed? What do you think Robinhood’s true ceiling is?

Damn, that’s a good question. I think that, like a lot of the other major brokerages at $150 billion to $200 billion, you’re probably going to see Robinhood catch up to that over the next couple of years or so. I would say their current all-time high is like 150. I think it’s going to be trading at $200 billion-plus, to be honest, by the end of next year. That’s my call on that.

But I think it’s very dependent on how much they can capture. Right now, Robinhood is a very new brokerage. A lot of the other brokerages in the US have a lot of really old customers who are not leaving them. So for Robinhood to get more into that market, they’re going to need to capture a lot of the younger generation.

I think that’s why they’re going so heavy into crypto. I think it’s really crucial for their thesis of moving things on-chain, moving RWAs on-chain, and tokenized stocks on-chain, because these other brokerages are not doing any of that. They’re not going to be as focused there, but I think if Robinhood is able to capture a lot of that value, then they should actually jump ahead of a lot of the other existing brokerages.

I think it’s going to benefit the stock a lot. I think HOOD is in a really good spot. I think the all-time high is around $150. It’s like $110 to $115 right now, around there.

The same reason why this show and this content appeals to people is because we’re meeting this next generation where they’re at, right? These guys aren’t going to move to New York and physically trade stocks on Wall Street. They’re going to do it from their homes.

They're going to do it on apps like Robinhood, Bullpen, and FOMO, etc. They're going to make these decisions based on their Discord alpha groups and Twitter, etc. That's just what it's going to be. These more traditionally leaning finance instruments and institutions—platforms like Robinhood—I think kind of go in that direction. Super bullish.

Also, just a little piece of alpha: I'm not going to name names, but one of these super-successful young traders, 22 years old, I was talking to him on the side, just asking him, “Yeah, how does he rotate out of tokens? Does he own property?” I was just picking his brain. He's like, “I keep pretty much all of my cash on Robinhood.” And Robinhood's stable. Yeah, because they offer 7%.

Morpho. Yeah, they're using Morpho behind the scenes.

What is it? It's like USDG or some shit?

USDG is—well, I know the yield on USDG is powered by Morpho. Morpho is a lending and borrowing crypto protocol.

Okay, way above my pay grade. I don't know what the fuck you just said, but for me, I'm like, “Oh, 7%. Cool.” This kid's cash-rich. He's built up this 8-figure portfolio, and he rotates that cash into a Robinhood account and collects 7% year over year. Seven percent on, call it, $10 million is fucking $700,000 a year. You could really dead-ass retire and live off that for good. That's just consistent income. I don't know. It's little fucking moves like that that make me think, “Wait, maybe I should move some money into Robinhood.” You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And then they have this culture-building stuff, too. They have the gold card and shit that you can trade points in—gamifying it.

I feel like they have a great brand. I don't know. I'm bullish. I'm bullish on Robinhood. I don't have a crazy big position. I'm actually down on it. I mistreated it so badly. I traded it and sold it right before you called it, missed that whole move up, and then FOMO-bought in. I'm like, “Fuck, I got to buy this shit.”

It's good, though. It's a good spot. It's chill. It's chill. It won't be the first time.

Are there too many launchpads? We see Pawns and Stonk. Somebody made a joke and was like, “Yo, FaZe Clan just launched a new—” What do you think about all the launchpads, bro?

Launchpads, I'll tell you: launchpads make so much money in crypto. They're not going to go away as long as that new-pair trading activity continues and the devs are incentivized to continue deploying these coins. If you look at Pump.fun over the past year, not even half, but the amount of revenue they've made as a company, they've also given out that exact same amount to the creators of these coins.

It's one of the most successful crypto businesses of all time that I've ever seen.

It might be the most successful in terms of just how much money they've made.

Yeah, and it's really durable. Even during the bear market, that revenue was continuing. I think as long as launchpads as a business are still making that much money, you're going to keep seeing people innovate and make more launchpads.

But what I think—and what I'm really focused on this cycle—is how to curate and find the coins that are actually going to do well long term. Launchpads make a lot of money off coins at really low market caps, but I think right now we're in a period where you're going to see a ton of new devs come into crypto, a ton of new retail capital, and a ton of new institutional capital come on-chain. When that happens, new protocols pop up—these tokenized protocols that are able to capture a lot of that value.

As you saw in DeFi Summer during 2020 and 2021, we had projects like Yearn, Compound, and Synthetix. All these projects did really well and went to multibillion-dollar valuations. I think you're going to see the same thing happen now with all the RWAs coming on-chain, the retail speculation and all these mobile apps, and the interest in memecoins paired with these stocks.

With all that activity, there are going to be protocols that pop up around these things and do really well. So it's about which launchpads are going to be able to figure out the incentive structure for coins to do well over the longer term and align with their holders on a longer time frame. I think that's where a lot of the innovation is going to come with launchpads. I don't think you've seen the end of that.

You don't think the game's been solved?

The game is not solved at all. The launchpad game is definitely not solved at all.

Interesting.

Yeah, we've seen the Long.xyz guys do a lot of cool stuff with how they don't even have a native token for their launchpad, and they're deepening liquidity on a lot of their pairs. I think they also started at higher market caps, which is cool. The Stomp.fun guys are also doing some cool things and trying to innovate there. They're crushing it.

There's a ton of innovation that's going to happen there, and just because they make so much money by default, you're going to keep seeing people try and attack that area.

Obviously, we've seen Pump.fun make these really sharp pivots and moves into new metas and new products, and kind of pivot out of the launchpad stuff, where the launchpad is obviously their bread and butter. We've seen some people capitalize and move in and fill little gaps and niches, like Pawns is Robinhood, right?

Some of the traders—again, behind the scenes, I've connected with a lot of these traders and had deep conversations and picked their brains 25 different ways—and a consistent point of feedback that I'm hearing from them is that they're obviously going down this more social-trading route because that's what's really hot right now.

Why do you think that is? Why do you think we run into a situation where all these hyper-successful finance platforms, generally, whether they're launchpads or trading terminals or whatever, once they get to a certain level, they kind of want to do it all?

Even Polymarket offers perps, right? Phantom—like, a lot of these platforms are starting to offer really the same exact products, one to one. Whereas I feel like Polymarket is clearly a standout, gold-standard prediction market, and that makes sense. I don't know. Do you think Pump.fun is kind of losing its grip on the launchpad stuff? What's your general opinion about that? Do you think it makes sense for them to try to do it all, or should they be focused on just the launchpad business?

It's a good question. I think the core reason that Pump.fun and other protocols in crypto are doing this is because their end goal is to own the user distribution as much as possible. It's not so much that they're focused on one part of the business versus another part of the business. It's that if you own where these users trade and where they spend a lot of their time, then you can do a lot of other stuff on the back end with what you already have locked in with these users.

I think that's why Pump.fun is going so heavily into social trading and into the mobile app, because a lot of these new users who join crypto are going to trade on mobile. Pump.fun is like, “Well, if we can capture this new cohort of users and have them in our app, and they can trade cross-chain and trade any tokens, regardless of whether they come from our launchpad or not, then we'll have a ton more users on our app.”

If they can create and launch coins in that exact same place, then we'll benefit from our revenue scaling in that way. I think it's really just a focus on owning the end user. Once you own the end user, you can do a ton of things on the back end to get them locked in and keep them there. I think that's why they're focusing on that.

Just keep as much capital on the app as possible. Keep as many people trading on the app for as long as possible, etc.

Yeah, and I don't think they're ignoring the launchpad. People complain that Pump.fun always innovates last and doesn't do things first to push things forward, but the reason I think they operate like that is because their launchpad, as a core business, is making a fuck-ton of money regardless of any new changes that they make.

If they have a core user base that continues to use Pump.fun and trade on Pump.fun, the new-pair cohort of traders isn't leaving Pump.fun. I think those are the core users they focus on the most. If they're like, “Okay, we don't want to change the product that much. We don't want to upset our core user base, regardless of what their other users or other traders may be saying,” then they only make changes when they feel like they really need to improve their product.

I think that's why they operate that way. They kind of operate on the safer side of waiting to see which changes make the most sense before they implement them, and do different things there.

Wow. No, they're all going crazy. Hold on.

Sorry. Some shit's happening right now. I think I'm making a fuck ton of money.

Holy fuck.

Holy fuck, bro, look at my thesis on this. 16 hours ago, it was at $180K when I said this. “Next time he says it, surely this rips.” I just made—by the way, I just made live $35,000.

That's fucked. Are you kidding me? I'm sorry, guys. This is cool because you guys should get this, too. Come here.

Look at this shit. This is fucking nuts.

Vlad just tweeted out the words “Dividend Hounds.” I've been slamming meme trades, been trading this token, Dividend Hounds. Yeah.

And it's up. I'm up—

15,000%.

I was trading it 16 hours ago at $180K, and my thesis—I wrote my thesis. I said, “Next time he says it, surely this rips.” Am I missing something? It feels like a free 10x money glitch.

I'm also fucking stupid and don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. I said this on some burner on one of these social apps, but I'm fucking up. Let's fucking go.

This is epic. Holy fuck. I'm sorry, I have to sell this right now because this is just how it goes, bro.

That's fire.

How sick is that, bro? What?

That's fire.

Let's fucking go.

I'm sorry. This is a live trade. This is happening right now.

By the way, guys, this is how you're supposed to trade information like this. Five minutes ago, I'm hitting sell on this, whereas I feel like the average person—

I don't even know what I'm doing right now or why I'm doing it, but this is what to do. This is so good. Holy fuck, bro. Live on the show is lit.

That's lit. That is lit.

It's because they texted me in the chat like, “Yo, look, Vlad. Is Raz live right now?” Hold on. Let's call Raz, because this was me and his call. This was me and his call. We have to call him.

This is too good. This is cinema. Cinema.

You can't make it up. Cinema, guys. We just hit—yeah, Dividend Hound in the chat. This is fucking lit. Yo, anybody from Raz's Discord? Who's here?

Where's Ellie?

Fuck, my whole fucking Discord was in this shit.

Brother, did you see the thesis I wrote 16 hours ago?

Am I a god-tier trader? Go read it.

I wrote it 16 hours ago. It said $180K. I wrote, “Next time he says it, surely this rips.” Am I missing something? Yeah, it literally became a meme coin, bro. The thesis was the thesis, bro. That's all I got.

The thesis was the thesis.

Next time he says it—he said it like 4 or 5 times. It's also a Robinhood dog token. See how silly this is, by the way? The types of shit—the reasons why we make the trades that we make. What did you say earlier? All right, Raz, congrats. Yo, we fucking banked that.

I didn't.

Oh, I'm selling it. I just sold 80% of my position, bro. I'm up from fucking $1,500 to 35 bands.

All right, good luck, bro. I'm just saying.

I'll hold a moon bag. I'll hold a couple million coins.

You're going to fucking regret that, man. I'm just saying.

You think so?

Maybe, bro. Who knows? Why would I sell it? I have no—

You also round-tripped AMC and had $2 million, and you sold it for fucking 300 bands. So maybe take a little bit of profit here, brother.

No, I'm good. He's banning. He's banning. It's silly. All right. Love. Peace. That just happened live. Holy fuck. That's amazing.

Sorry about that.

Let's go.

Holy fuck. That's epic. Sorry about that, guys. Holy fuck. That's awesome.

That's crazy.

That's so sick. It's silly season, ladies and gentlemen. Good ideas, though. Good ideas. The reason I liked it is because Raz's Discord was talking about how he says “Dividend Hounds.” We love our dividend hounds, like people on their app who like to chase dividends.

Yeah. Yeah.

And they replace the stonk guy with a hound dog. So it's a Robinhood dog token—

—and then it's fuck—I don't know. It made sense, and I'm glad that I made that trade.

Marginal buyer for majors: where do you think—where do you see most of the inflow from outside of retail bidding on memes? How does somebody jump from being interested in this to going and buying memes? What do you think that process looks like? How do we get there? What's your opinion on this?

I mean, it always happens in crypto at the beginning of cycles, once you see some of the crypto majors start to reprice upward. Right now, it's happening with Zcash. Obviously, Zcash moved from around $200 a few months ago to $500 now, which is fucking crazy. But the wealth effect from crypto majors doing really well usually goes to crypto natives. Crypto natives are the people who are most likely to be trading these things on-chain and moving further down the risk curve.

But what also happens is, when crypto majors are doing really well—Bitcoin's doing well, Zcash and all these other majors are doing well—they hit the news cycle a lot harder. When crypto hits the news cycle a lot harder, that's when you see people get more interested in crypto. And when they get more interested in crypto, all the different crypto apps, like Coinbase—I think Robinhood is probably going to see an increase in numbers. Mobile apps like FOMO and Pump are going to see an increase in numbers.

The capital that's bidding these majors is also going to look to bid the lower-market-cap stuff on-chain. I feel like the speculation culture right now for retail is just so aggressive. I think people have made a ton of money off AI stocks over the past few years. Momentum trading is a big thing now because of how social trading is.

People who are sharing their thesis—as they get more popular, there are more people who get interested in these things and look to trade them. It's generally a combination of a wealth effect directly to crypto natives, crypto hitting the mainstream news a lot more, and then you see a lot more retail interest in the market. It happens pretty quickly, to be honest, but the same type of trends happen every cycle.

You know, I saw you in the chat with the winky face. Honestly, I’ve got to give that fool—no, I can’t. I can’t. Not yet. Once my P&L’s 7 figs, I’m doxing my [inaudible]. I’m going to show you guys this 40-year-old [inaudible] watch YouTuber.

Someone said Kimchi Saylor Frank. I like Doug Funnie.

Warren, I see you. Warren, you know Doug Funnie?

No.

We should have Doug Funnie on.

He’s kind of funny. He’s a CT guy. He’s a trader, but I think he actually might be in New York, to be honest. He’s been pretty on point.

He’s good. Damn, chat knows. Chat knows. Shout-out.

Dip Wheeler[?] is cool. I like GCR. Give it to the guy. No, no, we said now. We said now.

Someone said Ethan Prosper.

That’s hilarious. BitBoy. BitBoy is crazy.

Someone said Orangie Mogul. I mean, bro—why didn’t I know RG was tall?

Yeah, that’s funny, bro. I thought he was like 5'10".

Watching you guys meet each other was awesome.

I met RG the other day, and he’s, like, 6'2". I was like, “What is happening?” Yo, chat knows ball. How do you guys know, by the way, that that’s me? Qwerty, give it to that guy. AFNZ1, whoever just said Qwerty. Cert traders as well.

Crazy beast.

He puts his dick on the line, bro. He’s taking these crazy 7-figure swings publicly. It’s fucking insane. I’ve never seen anything like it.

And I’ve recently met him as well. He’s a handsome kid. I fuck with bro. I fuck with bro.

Someone said I got doxxed by reading my post. I’m [inaudible]. It’s whatever. Stop saying it, chat. It’s fine. We’re not there yet. We’re close. We’re, like, a quarter of the way there. Almost. The job’s not finished. The job’s not finished.

I didn’t know how hilarious that was in the chat.

That’s hilarious. ASAP, bro. ASAP’s the goat. He might be one of our all-time goated viewers. Love this kid.

He’s the best. Carl’s insane, bro. Stop. Oh, shit.

Oh, what else we got?

Some AI topics. Are traders really the new athlete? We keep hearing traders are the new celebrity. Traders are the new athlete. I think a better comp is esports. It makes so much sense to me, and I’ve overly documented this shit with these guys. What’s your opinion on this?

I think it’s similar in that you have a very small group of people who are really talented at these things. I think the difference between the traders-and-the-athletes conversation is that, not to say it’s easy to just repeat what they’re doing and make money, but you’re definitely not going to be able to repeat LeBron and do what LeBron is doing.

I think trading is something that’s self-taught, so you can teach yourself how to trade. With how much content has been blowing up and streaming content has been blowing up purely on the entertainment value and how interesting it is to watch these people, with trading you have the combination of entertainment and education. I don’t think that’s ever been a thing in content before.

That’s why it’s really—I don’t even think they’re really, to be honest—I don’t think they’re the new athletes because I think it’s a completely different kind of content that hasn’t really existed in that way before. I think they’re in a completely different domain than everybody else, if I’m being honest.

There’s such a small subset of people who are able to do these things and also share information in a way that’s digestible for people. I think they’re going to be worth their weight in gold because the younger generation is going to become so attached to the people who are able to be correct on calls, make their followers money, and compound their wealth from small amounts over time.

Companies are going to pay a lot for ad sponsorships and partnerships with these people because they’re going to be in such high demand from such an important group of people—the younger generation that’s also coming into their own in their careers, spending money, and spending capital. Being able to tap into that crowd is worth a lot to a lot of these companies. I think it’s kind of a different market segment.

I’m sorry. Get clipping on me hitting that live. By the way, Michael Cat isn’t up here right now, but that’s so sick that I hit that live. That’s so sick.

Yeah, that’s crazy. I was preaching to all the traders as we’ve been doing these productions. I was like, “Y’all have to get in the habit of pulling your fucking phones out or having a cameraman with you,” because you’ve got people like Qwerty and Rowdy hitting shit—

Rowdy’s vlog was fire.

Yeah, sick as fuck.

Crazy.

But getting it in the process of literally hitting it live is fucking crazy. I’ve been getting in the habit of recording my screens and me on my setup, basically just going for clips.

Yeah, good. The clip farming on that is crazy because you can’t replicate it. It’s very hard to catch that shit happening in real time.

And Sentos just hit $800K on AMC live in a tweet. Did you see that clip?

Yeah, everyone saw that clip. It’s his biggest clip. It’s his biggest moment. I’m like, “You guys don’t understand.”

He sold it live while it was happening too.

I don’t think he sold—I don’t think he realized all of it. But you know how the fucking game goes with unrealized—

Everyone sees the number. I swear to God, though, it’s this simple: euphoria and whatever in your brain creates the urge to take a screenshot and share it with people.

Sell.

Sell. If you’re screenshotting an unrealized P&L to show people and flex it, just sell.

Just sell a little bit.

I swear to God, just sell a little bit.

Always keep a moon bag. Always keep a moon bag, especially if you feel crazy about it or whatever.

But I swear to God, 9 times out of 10, if you’re screenshotting and sharing, I don’t know. At least in my own personal experience, it’s fucking—

No, it’s 100%.

100%.

100%, 100%. The reason that works, though, is actually the reason why technical analysis works. When widespread euphoria represents top signals in markets, it’s because if everybody’s euphoric and everybody’s super excited about the position, that means that everybody’s already allocated, everybody’s already balls-deep, and everybody’s already up a fucking ton of money.

If all of these people are up a fucking ton of money, who else is left to buy but you? That’s literally why euphoria tops markets, and that’s also why markets bottom on fear. Everybody’s panicking, everybody sold their position, everybody’s liquid. It’s like, okay, who’s left to sell?

100%.

So that emotional shit works both ways. That’s why technical analysis works.

AMC, and 2 days later the whole fucking market kind of tanked 20%. I was down fucking 50, 60 bands in a day just on one of these apps with a smaller port. During the AMC trade, I was almost lying to myself. I felt euphoric, but I’m like, of course I feel euphoric, right? I’m in a unique position. I don’t feel like everybody feels this way, so I’m going to just hang tight. I wish I would have sold more in that moment. It’s just a one-to-one rule at this point.

Yeah, you get used to recognizing it in yourself and flipping. It happened to me this cycle, actually, at the bottom. I was so bearish. You saw I was so bearish when Bitcoin was first hitting $60K. I was like, “Bro, this shit’s going to fucking go to $40K. I don’t know where this shit’s going to go.”

Then it bounced. I had to close a lot of my shorts to get out of my positions. When it came back to retest it the second time, I was like, “Okay, I was super bearish here at this spot. It held it last time. Everybody’s super bearish right now. This is a good spot, a good risk-reward, where I can bet here and bet on the bottom being in,” and just split.

I genuinely believe it’s your superpower. I’ve said it to you before, and I might have said it on the show, but I think your ability to change your mind and opinion on the fly—literally second to second—is a fucking superpower because there are so many variables at play.

It’s one thing to be able to say you’re willing to do that and want to do it. It’s another thing to actually be able to do it. People’s egos get involved, the way that your position affects what other people are saying. You know what I’m saying? You kind of ignore all that shit and just—

You just ride the wave.

You just ride the wave, and you do it really, really well. You have to be able to do that.

You have to be able to do that. You have to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and say, “Oh, I was wrong about this.” Or, “Yeah, I felt this way yesterday, but I feel this way today.” And that’s fine. Just turn risk on and off accordingly, and move chips.

By the way, the best example for you is—even off camera, we were all sitting the other day and you were like, “Ethereum looks really good here.” That coming out of your mouth is insane. But your ability to go ahead and say something like that is why you are who you are.

I’ve got to take my first piss of the show. So, yeah, take over. We’re close. We’re close.

Why do you have to pee? What’s good, chat? Y’all fuck with my hat? I’ve got a fucking bottle opener on this hat.

Crazy. Yo, headphones in.

Okay.

In 5.

5 minutes. All right, what do we want to talk about, chat? What’s popping? How are you guys doing? How’s your week been? Are we up money? Are we up money? We’re up. We’re up. We’re up. We’re up.

What do I think about the paid narrative? People keep sending me cash to my X Money. I don’t exactly know how or what it is, and it’s hard for me to see which coins are doing it. It’s interesting. People have said it’s kind of like bags. I honestly haven’t looked that much into it, to be honest, but I do keep getting cash on my X from whatever that product is.

You should have Blond:ish from Market Bubble. I actually know Blond:ish. She’s cool. DJ, yeah, she’s chill.

If you could buy 1 stock today and hold it through the entire bull market—oh, that’s hard. High cap or low cap? I think, obviously, we talked about Robinhood. I like Robinhood a lot. I think Meta is honestly in a really interesting spot right now because of the AI-doomer narrative that’s been spreading a lot.

I think it’s because a lot of the labs are concerned with how fast the open-source AI models are catching up to them, with how efficient and how good they are. If you believe that open-source AI is going to catch up to the best labs, then the people with the most distribution are going to win the hardest over the next few years.

Meta is obviously one of the companies that has the most distribution and is going to be able to benefit from tailoring ads specifically with their most advanced AI algorithms to their users and getting them to spend more. Meta actually hasn’t spent a shit ton on AI. They’ve spent some, but they’re focused on their open-source AI as well.

I think they’re in one of the best positions among the larger companies to do well. They’ve kind of been under-discussed.

Yeah.

Did y’all see Grok can talk now? Like, vocally. I’ve been using Grok all the time.

I know everyone’s saying it. I’ve been real-world busy. I haven’t been able to really lock in.

Yeah, I use this shit every day.

It’s that much better, huh? It’s really good.

Is it weird that I feel almost like an emotional attachment to my current models and LLMs?

No, it’s normal. Yeah.

It’s weird. I would genuinely feel bad to just say bye to her.

It’s like, “Bye, bitch.”

And switch it over.

You’ve got to move her over. You can transport her. You can transport her.

Yeah, I’ll feel—yeah. Okay. You can transport her.

Yeah. We’ll put her brain into it.

Yeah. We’ll call it an upgrade, not a replacement.

Yeah.

Yo, what’s good, brother? Malik Jackson.

Malik Jackson

I’m doing well. How are you guys doing? How are you guys doing today?

We’re doing amazing. We’re doing amazing. The markets are hot.

Malik Jackson

Fall’s coming. It’s not super hot outside anymore. I’m excited. I’m having a great time.

Chat loves you. I don’t know if you can see it, but they love you. They’re excited for you to come on.

Yeah, they’re excited for you to come on.

We’re more than excited to have you. Where are you right now?

Malik Jackson

Where am I? I’m in Los Angeles, California. I came to a networking event, so I apologize about the location, but I had to come down to Hermosa Beach to do a networking event. I was able to step aside and focus on you guys, but I appreciate the opportunity. This is awesome, so thank you guys.

I’m based in L.A. I’ve lived there for the last 10 years, so no need to apologize. It’s the fucking greatest city on planet Earth. Where are you typically based?

Malik Jackson

I’m in Tarzana, in the San Fernando Valley.

Oh, cool. We’ve got a link. What about you?

Catch up.

I’m in Beverly Hills.

Malik Jackson

Nice, nice. So you’re fancy. You know, I came from the more residential side. They get a little more heat.

I lived in West Hollywood for the first 10 years I lived there, but I’ve got a dog now. We’ve done well over the past couple of years, so we made a couple of upgrades.

Malik Jackson

Congratulations. That’s the way it goes. That’s the way life’s supposed to go. So congrats on your guys’ success. I’ve really been following you guys and understanding some of the things you guys have been able to do—at least what you show people publicly. So, congrats. Now you get the girl or girls—I don’t know how you live life, whatever—but now those come. So, progression of life.

Amen. Amen.

Yeah. We did our best to introduce you, but give us your background—what you’re up to now post-NFL retirement, Super Bowl champion. Obviously, this is a show that kind of revolves around business and finance. “Invest in yourself” is our mantra. We preach a lot about health, taking care of your mental and your physical. I feel like you’re probably a pretty good embodiment of that. Do you want to introduce yourself to the chat?

Malik Jackson

Yes. What’s up, chat? My name is Malik Jackson, Super Bowl 50 champion and 10-year NFL veteran. Now I’m the owner and founder of Care League, a concierge service that provides access to health, wellness, longevity, and lifestyle. I’m really glad to be here and be on this platform. Thank you guys for having me.

What’s 1 piece of advice you’d give to a college athlete who’s now making millions of dollars through NIL?

Malik Jackson

I would say build a team. In all seriousness, hire—or build—a team around you that you can trust. I would say, essentially, from the money you get—say you make 1,000,000—keep 10% on the side for yourself, and then put 90% away into a trust or somewhere where you can make some money. Possibly even buy some property in the college area that you’re in, because there are always going to be kids going there.

I would say invest, but save—save and invest—and build a team.

I feel like that’s pretty broad, basic advice that most people would give, which is excellent advice, by the way. There’s a reason for it. But the first thing that you said, I feel like not a lot of people cover that and lead with that. I 100% agree: a team, a real-deal lawyer, a finance guy, a good manager that you can trust. Make sure all their interests are aligned with yours.

I made a lot of these early mistakes in my career. I’ve worked in media and this weird social media, internet thing for 15 years. I made the mistake of thinking certain entities’ lawyers were my own lawyers. I thought they were working in my interest, and really what it was—I always thought there was going to be some magic man who came out of the sky who was going to help me figure out taxes and take care of my finances. That’s just not the case.

As men, you’ve got to take control of your own life. You’ve got to understand that you’re fucking alone in this. It’s fine. You just have to account for that, and you just have to plan for that. A team, I think, is incredible advice.

Well, I think it’s an interesting thing. Something I wish I would have done is maybe even build a board for my life, right? Let me say, can I get my mom, my dad, my agent, my financial adviser, maybe 1 or 2 friends—people that I truly trust—and have us come together to make decisions?

I think that’ll weed out the bad players really fast, right? Instead of you, as a person with the money, not having all the education in the situation that we’re in, why don’t we get an ecosystem together? Then you can tell who’s trying to lie to you, who’s trying to fuck you out of some money. That’s truly the ecosystem I’m really thinking about building, and I’m kind of really talking about building it.

Malik Jackson

But yeah.

Yeah. I think for me, one of the best pieces of advice is that when you come into more money than you've had at any other point in your life, you're not going to be able to rely on advice from the people you were typically relying on for advice. It's really good to have a mentor or somebody who's on the same level as you, or even above you, that you can talk to and who will give you objective advice on how you should be navigating, because you do have to navigate things a different way than you were before.

I think what people don't really realize is that spending the money to have that team around you, who's going to help you do things that you're not an expert in, is actually going to save you a shit ton of money down the line. If you don't do that and you don't protect yourself in certain ways, you can set yourself up for failure. But yeah, I definitely agree. That's why—

Sorry, go ahead. Sorry, Frank. I didn't mean—

No, no, it's cool. I was just going to go off the back of that point into what you said earlier. That's why you still see the biggest artists and athletes, and the richest athletes in the world. LeBron James still has—what's his guy?

Who's his manager?

Paul. Yeah, Rich Paul. Rich Paul. Rich Paul. You still see Rich Paul obviously playing a huge, massive role in him as a business, an athlete, and an individual. He has upside. He has alignment there because whatever that deal looks like, that 10% or 20% is going directly toward making sure that other 80% or 90% is worth 2, 3, 4, or 5 times as much, and making sure, above all else, that it's protected first and foremost.

Mhm. No, that's real because I think he did it great. When you put somebody in a position to go out there, educate themselves, and make themselves better, they're going to come back to you with a heart full of love because now you put them in position. Now they want to help you, and now you guys can help each other grow. There's no ill will when that brotherhood is there.

I think, for me, going back to the point you just made, my first 4 years I was given my financial adviser through my agent. Then my agent essentially had to sit me down in my 4th year. I was playing really good, and he sat me down. He was like, “Hey man, we won't say the guy's name, but this guy just got caught up in a Ponzi scheme. He's going to go to jail for a while.”

And I was like, “What is that?” You know what I'm saying? I'm worried about football; I'm not understanding. This guy put me on this guy. So then I realized what that actually was and how it could have messed me up. A lot of my first 4 years—say, the first 2 to 4 years—I was doing everything with a debit card. I wasn't getting any credit. He didn't get me on credit cards. He wasn't doing investments. He was just sitting there taking money, you know.

That's a lot of the realities that a lot of athletes go through, and it's sad because then people look at us as athletes like we're the problem. We are, because we should be smarter, right? But we all sit here as men of means and are going to employ people to do stuff. When we employ people to do stuff, they should be accountable for what needs to be done or what is lost.

Absolutely. Once it's in writing, once there's an agreement to be had, once the proper incentives and alignment are all in place, everything's understood, and that's all clear. You should obviously expect good representation in finance and stuff. That's unfortunate. That's fucking crazy.

Yeah.

But you're doing all right now, it looks like, right? Doing your thing.

I'm doing okay.

Your lifetime earnings in the NFL were what? Some ballpark $72 million, I think I read somewhere.

Malik Jackson

That's probably after taxes. Yeah, around there. Yeah.

After taxes? Wow, that's legendary. That's epic. That's epic.

I'm sorry. It was probably like $130M around there—but before taxes, so after taxes probably, you know, that's great. I mean, yeah, that's great.

Sick clarity on that. Is that a yellow-gold Patek on your wrist?

Malik Jackson

Yeah. Yeah. A little nice piece I got when I got my second deal. When I got my second deal in Jacksonville, I signed 6 for $90M, $45M guaranteed, and so I was able to buy this one—a World Time Patek—and one more other one. So yeah, Patek, however you say it.

Yeah, the yellow-gold Pateks are fucking sick. I just got a yellow-gold Aquanaut. I'd never seen one. I saw it in person, and I'm like, “I need that.” What the fuck?

Malik Jackson

They keep their money, you know. They keep their—

Pateks are fucking sick. Yeah, that's the watch that you need to get. He doesn't wear watches, but you are a fucking Aquanaut. Yeah, you are.

Yeah, that's—

Step it up. Step it up.

What's the best investment you've ever made to date?

I'll say some of the top-performing investments because I have to go to my financial team and make sure we look it up to date. They include Rubrik, Glass House, and a variety of VC funds like Cross Culture Ventures and TrueBridge Capital. I also invested in some MLB and NBA team investments as well. So those are a few of the things that we've been able to invest in.

But I think the top investment—that's what you asked me—was in 2019. I paid for about a $16M life insurance policy with a premium of $400,000. So that's probably one of the bigger purchases I made.

Invest in yourself. A whole new meaning to it.

Malik Jackson

Hey, man, you have kids and you see the way guys are falling down after playing in the league. When you're truly altruistic, like you guys said at the beginning, and you're a man, nobody cares about you, but you need to care about your whole tribe. That's just the mission I've taken on.

100%. What about a more formal, one-to-one investment where you seeded a company, put $100K in some shit, and it came back? We just saw—I was with my boy Zach when the Hugging Face acquisition news broke, and he's like, “Yo, I swear Katie invested in this shit.” You know, at seed. I texted him—they're friends. He's like, “Oh, shit.” Like, “Yeah, I just woke up to an extra $60M in my fucking email.” Do you have any stories like that?

Malik Jackson

That's love. I haven't got something that expensive, but I did invest in a company. The name is escaping me right now, but they invested about $100K and were able to make $2M back off of that one. So that was a good deal. But off the top of my head, those $60M ones are off the charts, and that's what we all crave, right?

For me, I've also invested in myself and my own company, trying to really build it out and put the money behind my words and my actions. I truly believe that's going to be a big exit, but as you guys understand, that takes time. Me investing in companies—from about $100K to about $2M—and then maybe, I would say—no, I did a million one time, and another company brought about $5M back, so it's about the same kind of averaging out. So yeah, it's—

They're nice returns. They're okay.

What mission are you on with the company? Where are you guys at right now? Have you guys raised money? What's the value of it? When did you start it, and where's it going? What do you hope to exit at? What is—what? Yeah.

No, sorry. But yeah, no, to answer your questions in as best an order as I could: What is the company? We are a concierge service that provides a personal assistant to every member, truly helping all our members with anything they need day to day, with our silos being health, wellness, longevity, lifestyle, and hospitality.

So essentially, like, you guys: “Hey, I got a hot date. I want to take her to a nice Michelin-star restaurant.” We can do that. “Hey, I want to go to Marbella, Spain.” We could do that, all the way to, “Hey, my kid needs to go to school. Do I need some vetting services?” So it's really anything in life that the person would need, focusing not only on athletes, but on high achievers, high performers, stay-at-home moms, professionals, executives, and things like that. We really are there.

We're getting ready to start getting our stuff—our data room and everything—for our seed round. We're working on that right now. We're self-funded. I definitely didn't know about OPM at the beginning. That's being an athlete, not being educated, but you do your work, you do your due diligence, and so we're really going after other people's money at this moment.

We have about 20 members right now that we're growing slowly. We've been around for about 3 years, but we're really looking to be a lot more B2B as well as B2C—not only taking care of our individual members, but going after being the Amex—or, excuse me, the Centurion for athletes, right? That's what we're really focused on being for banks, benefits packages for corporations, and sports agencies. So really taking care of members and taking care of individuals and people the best way we know how, being well connected.

I like it. It’s white-glove concierge, person to person. Do you guys have any plans on doing anything with AI?

A friend of mine just invested in a company called Instinct. I think they just closed at around $2.5B, and I think they’re doing another round at around $10B. Have you heard of Instinct?

Somebody sent me that.

Yeah, I got it. It’s invite-only right now. I don’t really know anything about it. I had an opportunity to put money in at $2.5B, but that’s closed, and now they’re at $10B.

Nice. Congratulations.

No, no, I didn’t invest. I completely blew it. We’ve been building Barstool Finance over here, so we’ve been a little bit busy.

I love that.

Malik’s lane makes a ton of sense. There are people who are super-high earners, and they’ll pay a lot for really good service in areas where they don’t have expertise. It’s actually a great lane. I think there’s a lot of money to be made there.

Flood is on his way to becoming a billionaire. He’s a popular trader on CT and a friend of ZNI [?]. He recently tweeted something out, in the last week or so, where he said, “Is there a service where I can just go get my whole body scanned and see top-tier, S-tier medical advice and guidance? Does this exist yet for the richest people in the world? I want to go in and just get taken care of on that level.”

It actually does.

Yeah, cool, cool.

That’s where we work. A member would ask us something like, “Hey, I want to get my body scanned.” We’d say, “Okay, well, that’s an executive physical. We can get you that. Where do you live?” UCLA does it, so we send you to UCLA, set you up, get a car to take you there, and get you lunch. Whatever the member wants to do, they ask us, and we have a Rolodex of providers who do that.

I need this. We’re going to connect after the show. I need this, and I’ll be the first person to champion it and go crazy for it. This is something I absolutely need.

Which markets and asset classes do you focus on most? In your own personal life, with your own personal finances, is it real estate? Is it tech?

Multiple classes, but it’s tech and real estate. I’m really building out a huge portfolio in real estate, which gets me a little worried now with the way interest rates are. It’s really a buyer’s market, but real estate could be commercial real estate, residential real estate, standalone housing, apartment buildings, and things like that.

Then tech, of course. You have to be in tech right now. It’s the golden age for that. That’s where we are as well.

What about crypto?

Malik Jackson

I’m not into crypto too much. Maybe 5%, but not a lot.

Good.

Not even 5%.

That’s a decent percentage. I was about to say, 5% is pretty high.

Yeah, not even 5%. I believe in crypto, but there are just too many coins coming out. I don’t know if it’s even regulated. I don’t know about crypto yet.

We got you, bro. We got you on the advice for all the crypto stuff.

I appreciate it.

I’m telling you, it’s not the scams, bro. We got you.

Chat, what would we tell a guy like Malik Jackson?

Yeah, chat. Top 5 points, chat.

Malik Jackson

Serious ones. I’m not trying to—

Majors, bro. Majors that you can allocate to.

Zcash. I saw somebody earlier in the chat say Zcash.

Yeah, Zcash. Bitcoin, VVV. Love that.

Yeah, love that from the chat. Write this down, chat. You educated me.

Chat said Anom [?]. Shout-out.

Yes, there you go. Bitcoin, obviously. HYPE is a really good one.

For sure. HYPE for sure.

HYPE.

Bitcoin, Zcash.

Robinhood.

VVV, Robinhood stock.

Yes.

The chat is really educated, man. I love that.

Solana.

That’s good.

Yeah, good chat. Proud of you. Proud of you for that.

Hey, man, you educate them right, brother. You’re educating them right. You guys are doing a good job over there.

We got a couple Boners in there and a couple other ones. It’s all good.

XRP? Ban that kid for life.

Yo, permanently ban whoever said XRP in the chat. Get the hell out of here.

That’s funny.

I love this. You guys are fun.

It’s great. It’s fun. We try to have as much fun as possible. We were just talking about this earlier, and I feel like it’s really important to meet this next generation where they’re at.

These traditional finance institutions, the old way of doing things, these old, gray-haired, suited traditional finance guys—they don’t resonate whatsoever with this next generation. Whereas you see characters like us—we’re even a little bit on the older, boomer side of the equation—you see guys like us, shows like Thread Guys [?], and people on TikTok like TJR, and I’m sure traditional finance is scratching their head: How does this person have so much influence in these markets? How is this possible?

It’s because he’s meeting them where they’re at. He’s on TikTok, he’s speaking their language, and he’s using apps and products that they want to use—the Polymarkets of the world, the FOMO of the world, the Robinhoods of the world.

I feel like that’s really important. This is what they want to do. They want to speculate on narratives, conversations, and culture in the shape of memecoins. They want to take bets or trade markets on culture, whereas Polymarket offers things like that. It’s cool. I feel like everyone’s a trader, the same way that everyone’s a gamer, the same way that everyone’s an investor to some degree, right? It’s just a matter of where on the spectrum you fall and what interests you have.

Well, rarely do people get to the success you guys have, where you actually have substance about the topics you’re talking about nowadays. You give everybody a mic, and now they always have something to talk about. But who’s really pushing people in the right direction? Who’s educating them? Who’s building a cohort of guys and young ladies, or whatever you identify as, who can say, “Hey, I’m educating myself by watching this”?

It’s not just that I’m watching somebody play a video game, or I’m watching somebody lie, or somebody’s getting paid to do something and now they push it to us. What’s really going to put me in a position to be just like you? That’s why people are sitting here watching and wanting to be like you in many ways. They’re asking, “How can I do that? How can I take that shortcut?”

The fact that you’re educating people, making the right partnerships, and bringing the value back—not because of how much money you can make, but because of how much value it’s going to add—I mean, that’s very impressive, and I commend you guys on that.

Amen, brother. Amen.

Trying our best, man.

Polymarket gave us a $100,000 free roll in fantasy.

You knew that.

Oh, I thought it was this week.

No, no, say what?

I wish. I wish Polymarket would hit my line, bro. No, but we just started a fantasy league with a bunch of other characters and CT traders—people who have shows kind of similar to this. What are your thoughts on the games this week, the upcoming games?

To be really honest with you, I’m more of a soccer guy now. I’m a fantasy FPL, English Premier League guy. I’ll watch the games if I’m sitting down and can catch them, but rarely am I like, “Oh, I’m going to sit down all day Sunday.” I don’t have a team. I’m just here for it. We’ll click on it.

Rather than do charades in the back behind the camera.

No, our production team is asking us to do something. Sorry.

No, do your thing. It’s all good, brother.

Sorry about that.

You don’t have a favorite team?

Not right now. Not even a team.

No, it’s one of those things where, when you understand the business side of it—for example, a short story: in Jacksonville, I signed a 6-year, $90 million contract. The first year I got there was really good. The second year I played there, I was a Pro Bowler. The third year, they benched me for undrafted free agents because they had to get rid of me to make room for, I think it was, the quarterback they have now.

When you understand the back end of the business and how shady it is, it’s kind of hard to root for a team. For me, I root for my friends who are still in the league.

Malik Jackson

And just allow every player to be able to say, “Hey, help you get your money.”

Yeah.

So that’s where I stand.

You might as well hop on the Eagles bandwagon, bro. I’m a die-hard Eagles fan. My dad actually played for the Eagles. He played 9 years for the Eagles and 2 years with the Raiders.

Malik Jackson

Really? Hey, man, congrats, by the way. It’s fucking crazy.

Yeah, I know. I know who he is. He was a dog. Congrats to him and his success in the league.

The Eagles were cool. It was funny when I went there and I was like, “Oh, the city of brotherly love.” And I was like, “This is great.” But then you start booing me in the first quarter. I’m like, “This is weird. Let me come to your job and boo you at 8:00 a.m. and be like, ‘What do you say?’” But it’s a lot. There are high expectations, so I can respect the culture. They want to win. They take no nonsense, and so—

Two sides of the same coin, though. We don’t fuck around, bro.

Philly’s fan base, when shit’s crazy, is fucking really crazy. Both sides.

Both sides. They are—

The double-edged sword. Yeah.

You know you lost the first week, right? By the way—

I did lose the first week, by the way.

The game was way closer than anybody thought. He’s like, “Bring up the chart. Bring up the chart.” No.

Which team are you?

I’m a Patriots fan. So obviously, we took this bet. What the fuck is that?

What the fuck is that?

I don’t know, fam.

See, man, it’s funny because you guys had a great year, then ended on a terrible note.

We went to the Super Bowl, but you lost.

We had a great— We’ve had a great life. We’re talking about the greatest franchise in fucking sports history, brother.

Oh, I don’t know about that. That’s great.

Who? Let’s hear it. Let’s hear it.

I don’t know. Hey, man, I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but—

You know, I haven’t heard of names.

For example—well, no. Okay. I’ll say the Cowboys. The Pittsburgh Steelers are—

Get the fuck out of here. The Cowboys? The Pittsburgh Steelers? I say, well, you’re talking about legacy. So we’re talking about legacy.

Throw my laptop out the window. Pittsburgh Steelers.

Yeah, the Denver Broncos are out there.

Chiefs and Bulls.

But I will say this. I will say this. It’s funny because you say that because, at the end of the day, it’s one of those things that, when you guys are getting rules made for you in the middle of a game—i.e., Patriots versus Raiders—when you guys are getting things like this, when we, the Jaguars, played the Patriots in Boston and Myles Jack wasn’t down, we should have gone to that Super Bowl to play the Philadelphia Eagles. You guys can be the best if you want, but there’s a lot of help, if we want to say that.

I agree. I agree, bro. My dad’s last game ever in the NFL was the Tuck Rule game, Raiders versus the Patriots, where they stripped Brady. It was a fumble. The game was over, and then they fucking overturned it, kicked the field goal, tied the game, and then Brady’s first Super Bowl ever, by the way. Brady’s first Super Bowl ever. This is all straight cope. The Tuck Rule is the worst call in NFL history.

History.

Brother, you’ve got to acknowledge it.

Objectively the worst.

Brother, bro was fucking 60 years old. He was in Tampa 2 weeks ago winning his 7th ring, bro. Tom Brady’s the fucking GOAT.

But he just got some help. He just got some help along the way. He’s got a lot of help, to say the least.

That’s it.

Patriots—I don’t have any beef with the Patriots. I had a lot of beef with the Patriots for a long time, and then after the Eagles beat them in that one Super Bowl, I didn’t have any beef with them after that.

Yeah, that was disgusting. I mean, for as many times as he’s gotten lucky—the helmet catch, this fucking Nick Foles Super Bowl, like—

Nick Foles.

Nick Foles, whatever the fuck his bum-ass name is.

Yeah, my God. Fucking bum.

See, he was playing possessed. He was playing possessed, bro. Possessed.

Hey, but I have to ask you: do you think Carson Wentz could have won that game?

No, I don’t. No—

No, I don’t. Nick fucking—

That year, he was nice that year. Go back to what we were just looking at, because we’ve got to go through this.

Oh, the game we’re talking about?

Yes.

It was actually crazy because we thought it was going to be the opposite.

No, I said exactly this. I said, “I’m trading the Patriots and live trading because there’s no way it’s staying at 39%.”

You did. You did.

And look, it got as high as fucking 86%. So that was the trade, obviously.

Yeah, you did say we took the trade for the entire game at Seattle. I deferred to you on that and bent the knee on that shit, but I knew this was trade disrespect. 39% was disrespect. I said it on the record. Obviously, I’m a bit biased, but the Patriots looked good in this fucking game, bro. They looked good in this game.

They did. You’re right.

They did. They just didn’t show up. So—

At the end, you know, it’d be like that sometimes. Be like that sometimes.

What about this?

What about this week, though? Yeah.

I haven’t even looked at the games, for real.

Buffalo-Lions. Oh, we’re going to smack the Titans. That’s—

Let’s go Patriots-Steelers, by the way. Since Pittsburgh is such a much better organization than New England, let’s talk about it. Pittsburgh’s at 32%. I mean, this is free money. This is free money. You’re going to have to go risk-on, but this is—

I think Aaron Rodgers is showing up right now, guys. I think Aaron Rodgers is putting— I think this— Look, I know the guy. I know he’s older. I know he’s a little bit seasoned, but I think that’s going to help. He’s going to— This is his year. He knows this is his last year. He’s going to put out.

Aaron Rodgers is showing up? You think Aaron Rodgers is showing up? Aaron Rodgers is showing up to the fucking IHOP senior-citizen special tonight at 10 p.m. Aaron Rodgers is showing up.

Hey, man, you can’t sit here in one breath and talk about Tom Brady being the GOAT, and then damn Aaron Rodgers, who’s almost the same age and about to retire.

I mean, you have to give it to the guy. You have to give it to Rodgers and Brady. Are you guys crazy?

You have to give it to the guy with the most trophies, right? I mean, and so I think it’s—

I have to give it to the guy. It’s not even—it’s not even like Tom Brady is the greatest—

He’s the all-time GOAT across every sport.

Period. Point blank. The most valuable player to ever touch any ball, for that matter. Bro, you know this. It’s really difficult. It’s really difficult in the NFL to carry longevity. In the NFL, longevity doesn’t exist. Those 2 words don’t make sense together at all. The average career length in the NFL is, what, 3 or 4 years? It’s really not easy to go 20 fucking years and just dominate the league in the fashion that he and Bill Belichick did.

It was always the monkey on his back: “Well, Bill, Bill, Bill. He needs Bill. He needs Bill.” He went and completely fucking blew that out of the water. He went to Tampa Bay and ran it the fuck back and showed everybody, “Nah, I’m fucking Tom Brady. I’m him.” I mean, Tom Brady has more—

Trophies, Super Bowl trophies, than the next fucking 35 teams combined. It’s insane. His level of dominance, his level of—I don’t know. It’s Tom Brady’s. I believe you.

I have a Tom Brady tattoo on me. He’s my GOAT.

I love that. I mean, he’s a beast. Much respect to the GOAT. I think he’s a beast. But like I said, I think there have been things out there, in game situations, that have just gone their way. And that’s just how I feel about it. But I do think he’s one of the best quarterbacks. I think he really implemented that checkdown play where people are rushing after him: checkdown, checkdown. He had the Edelmans of the world, right? And so I think he’s definitely a beast, man. You can’t take it away from him. But—

He’s the greatest game manager, man. He’s the greatest game manager of all time. And I believe Tom Brady’s the epitome of how far you can go with delusional confidence, period, and work ethic. That guy had no business on paper being the greatest of all time, but he still is. And why? Because he always believed it before anybody else believed it. He said, “I’m that fucking guy,” and anybody else in his position—Drew Bledsoe out for the season—you’re fucking shivering, shaking, your heart rate’s fucking going a thousand miles a minute. He said, “Bet. This is what the fuck I’ve been waiting for. This is my fucking time.” He touched the ball and never put it back down.

He’s a dog.

He’s insane. He’s insane.

I’ll kill for Tom Brady, man. I really will. I’ll ride.

It’s like that Chief Keef intro: “Chief Sosa ain’t about this. Chief Sosa ain’t about that.”

Oh, my God.

W to Tom Brady in the chat. Yeah, we’re at the hour mark now. We’re at 6:00 p.m. This has been a lot of fun, bro. We have to have you back on the show. We’ve got to link next time I’m in LA.

Likewise.

You’re awesome, bro. Your mission with your company and the message that you’re championing—I think it’s commendable. “Invest in yourself” is the whole tagline of this show. It’s more important than ever, I feel like.

It is. No, 10,000%. Thank you guys for the platform. Thank you for letting me share my two cents and really just allowing me to grow as a businessman and a person.

Boys, congratulations to you guys on all the success you’ve had, all the predictions you’ve gotten right, and all the people you’re helping, man. It’s much needed. Best of luck to you guys in the future. Blessed, man.

Thank you so much, brother. W Malik in the chat. Thank you so much, bro.

He’s cool, bro.

He’s awesome. He’s awesome, and he has great advice. I mean, you don’t really see people open with, “Get a team.”

I’ve worked with so much fucking talent and people who come up at a young age—19, 20—and come up on a big bag. You have to walk them through why it’s important to hire an accountant or why it’s important to have a lawyer look at a fucking contract that’s an 8-figure deal. It’s like, dude, you need to do this. This is just how it works.

But you live and you learn. I’m going to take my second piss of the episode. Carry it for a second, and then we have to talk about who we have coming next.

Nate, what’s good, chat? You guys with Malik? I feel like he was cool.

Yeah, he’s awesome.

He was lit. Oh, somebody said “Gramp’s bladder,” bro. I know. Banks takes like 85 pisses every episode. It’s pretty fucking crazy.

What’s up? What’s up? What’s up? Yeah, he is humble, bro. We were like, “He made $70 million.” He’s like, “Yeah, that’s post-tax.” It’s like, Goddamn, bro. That’s fucking hard. That’s lit.

Yeah, we’ve been talking about Robinhood a lot, talking about the tokenized stock stuff and RWAs, as you guys know. We have the Long.xyz founder coming on next, a super-smart dude. He’s been crushing it on Robinhood, one of the protocols that I think has been leading this current meta that we’re in.

I’m excited to hear from him, and he’ll give us some updates on his platform and how he’s thinking about the market. It should be good. We’ve had a lot of good guests on, but this is very relevant to everything that we’ve been talking about, so it should be cool.

Let's give away $1,000 to chat. Put your Phantom address or Phantom .at in the chat. We have four more airdrops, and we'll pick winners from Phantom's native chat as well. Chat, who was smart enough to hit Dividend Hounds five minutes ago? Who is your favorite trader right now?

Somebody said Ansem is without hair. Bro, y’all need help. You really do. I swear, you really do. What are you guys long right now? Somebody said, “Do I see anything gaining traction outside of BTC hype?”

ZEC, NEAR, NE. I think NEAR actually does look really good. I think a lot of people who missed Zcash are going to chase it by chasing NEAR, to be honest.

Nice, nice, nice, nice.

DRV. Yeah, DRV. We actually haven’t talked about DRV. I think it’s Derive.xyz, that platform.

The perpetual platforms have been some of the most successful in crypto over the past few years. We know Hyperliquid and perps in general, starting with BitMEX and all these other crypto exchanges. But options have never really taken off that aggressively in crypto, and Derive is one of those platforms that’s focusing on a decentralized options protocol.

I think their revenue numbers have been pretty aggressively up and to the right. That is an interesting play. Shout-out to whoever called DRV. I think that actually is one worth looking into, especially because Hyperliquid has done so well. I don’t think there’s actually a lot of competition on the options side.

Oh, the boy is back.

Yep, the boy is back.

We have our boy Nate, founder of Long, coming in. He just hit a fucking 7-figure public trade. What was it? He’ll tell us. The social trading shit, though—it’s fucking fun. I see him smiling. Get him in here, bro. Get him.

Yeah, man. Get him in. Get him in.

We have one more person to give an airdrop to. Let's get W Longs in the chat for Nate, the founder of Long. He's just hit a seven-figure public trade. Nate, pick somebody out of our chat to give $1,000 to. Ask the chat a question about Long.

What’s good, Nate?

Hey, happy to be here. I brought the special merch, you know.

We love that.

So, I’m Nate. I’m one of the co-founders of Long. I think you guys probably know me from tweeting all day and trying to push this vision as far as we can. By the way, is the connection okay? It’s a bit blurry.

Is it blurry? I don’t know. I’m having trouble hearing it. Wait, wait.

Yeah.

Nate, hit “accept” on your computer. They’re saying “L mic” in the chat, too. We’ll fix it, chat. Don’t worry. They said your voice is muffled.

Is it better now?

Much better. Much better.

Awesome.

W mic’s in the chat. Cool. All right, let’s start from the top. We’ve got Nate B. Is it Banish?

Yeah. Yeah.

It’s a tough-ass name. It’s a hard name.

It’s a tough-ass name. You sound like a fucking anime character.

Is that your actual last name or no?

That’s my actual last name.

That’s fucking insane.

He’s banishing his competitors to the chat.

That’s insane. Nate Banish genuinely sounds like a fucking WWE wrestler. It’s crazy.

All right, Nate. Introduce yourself to the chat.

Yeah. I’m Nate. I’m one of the co-founders of Long. You’ve probably been seeing me on X, riding for this vision that we’re trying to push, which is really about unlocking the last meta, which we think will be about RWAs and tokenized stocks, specifically pairings.

Long has quite a history. We’ve been working on that for almost a year and a half. This is our final and most successful iteration so far. We’re closing in on $1.5 billion in total RWA volume on Robinhood. Some of our assets are effectively the biggest stock pairs across all of crypto, and I think they’re also a few of the largest assets out there that were recently launched. I would say that’s a good start.

When you say “the last meta in crypto,” what do you mean by that—the last meta? Because that’s a strong statement, brother.

That’s a strong one. I think it’s almost like—I’m a big fan of meme-fi, right? You pioneered this kind of term, and what we’re going to realize with stocks is that this is going to blur the actual line we’ve had so far between 2 asset classes.

We had stocks on one end and crypto on the other end, but what everyone’s realizing now is that stocks and the stock market are actually more mimetic than we think, and crypto markets are actually much more legit—or interesting as a compounding machine—than most people think.

For the last couple of years, when we were essentially trying to build reflexivity through majors, SOL is going up, PUMP is kind of rising, and all the Solana coins are going up as well, or the same thing with ETH. That was the biggest limit on our potential.

But if we can actually onboard even 1% of the stock market into tokenized equities, we’re talking about $0.5 trillion, I think. Just $0.5 trillion. It’s crazy, because I think the stock market is like $50 trillion—the entire market.

What we’re going to see, in my opinion, is, for the first time in history, all the native tools that we know and are familiar with, which are mimetics.

Nate Banish

Liquidity pools and coordination are going to be a superpower that retail stock traders and crypto-native agents can use to coordinate and align in a very nice way. It won't be about reflexivity with specific micro-crypto genres. It's going to be something similar to what we see on Polymarket or Kaito, kind of becoming the center of the news. So I think stock perps, and specifically Long, can become the center of the stock market, and that would be the endgame of the meta.

So I tend to agree with you. I actually think it's extremely healthy, as far as public perception is concerned, and how crypto has historically been branded. Crypto is a scam in so many people's minds, especially mainstream retail. I think the lines being blurred is a very good thing for us in this market and this industry.

I think trading and finance in general absorbing crypto, and it all feeling like this one giant thing, is where we're headed. I agree with that in that sense. But I don't know. I think crypto will likely be the dominant, leading technology that the metaverse leans on in gaming.

I honestly think the endgame meta for crypto, just to take your bar, looks more like Grand Theft Auto 6—not Grand Theft Auto 6 exactly, but you know what I mean. Peer-to-peer trading, an open economy, the ability to go build worlds, real estate, peer-to-peer trading, and NFTs. What the vision was for NFTs—I just think NFTs were 10 years too early. What's your opinion on that?

Nate Banish

Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I'm not saying that crypto technology isn't valuable, but if you're really trying to zoom out, most of the people who are playing NBA Top Shot don't even know it's about crypto. I wouldn't even call it a meta because there is no real coordination, right? It's very focused on a specific target audience. If you like cards and basketball, this is great for you.

There are probably more examples that I'm forgetting about, but I would say crypto as a backend—a way to compose with different assets—is going to accelerate, and we'll see more and more use cases. But when I'm thinking about meta, which is almost like a consensus in the market—okay, we think this category of asset can be exciting—I feel like RWAs can really be this sort of PvE final meta.

The way I describe PvE, it's not just about not having, like, vamping or whatever. It's about introducing so much abundance into the space, so many net-new flows, that I think almost none of the leading teams or category leaders in the industry were actually doing.

I think this is where PvE becomes real, right? Because PvP is just a constraint of limited liquidity and limited flows, the way most of the launchpads are designed. We won't really be bothered with PvP when we have so much activity and so many flows coming into the space. I think that's the endgame here.

I know you've talked about wanting a PvE situation for your launchpad. Can you talk more about, at the base level, what differentiates Long.xyz from other launchpads, what your focus is on in making the assets more sustainable long-term, and how you go about doing that?

Nate Banish

Yeah. I can break it down into 3 different layers. The first is the liquidity design, which doesn't use bonding curves. That effectively means that, in order for an asset on Long to actually grow, you can't really pump it or do supply control in the first seconds of it. It compounds a lot of liquidity, so this is one thing, and we can jump into it a bit later.

The second thing we did—and this was almost a last-minute tweak—was that these memetic RWAs need to have some sort of scarcity, or at least uniqueness. When we launched Long, we implemented a 24-hour ticker lock, to the point that no one can relaunch or launch another token with the same ticker.

I fuck with them a lot. That's correct.

Nate Banish

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep in mind that this is counterintuitive to a launcher's business model, because in PvP—

Yeah, you want people to launch as many coins as humanly possible, typically. That's really good. I like that you're cracked, bro. This fool's cracked.

You came in here, and obviously you've led with and introduced yourself as the founder of Long, but you also happen to be a cracked-out, psyched-out trader as well. You're out in the open, trading in public on FOMO, and I'm looking at your FOMO account right now. You're up $1.3 million in the last 24 hours. A lot of it's unrealized, but you're holding $6.1 million of AI, Artificially Intelligent.

Yeah, I think that's another part of it, and we can jump now into culture. Almost every launcher out there, or an app like it, has a runner, and they're like, “Okay, at the point it becomes a bit too difficult, we'll just pivot attention into the next meta, the next iteration, or the next new shiny thing.”

With AI, on day 3 or 4, I didn't really think it would be so big at the beginning, but I started getting so many signals. People I really appreciate and respect told me, “This is the craziest ticker you can imagine.”

It's a crazy ticker, bro.

It's a crazy ticker. It's an AI, it's paired with NVIDIA, it's artificially intelligent—it has all the components. Then I was like, “Damn, this might be it. This generation might be the one.”

You were pretty disgustingly right. Yeah, you're number 5 on the leaderboard. I mean, you were pretty disgustingly right.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, to circle back to the question: you were saying there are 3 things. The first thing is no bonding curve. You're saying the second thing is the ticker lock. What was the third thing?

So, yeah, the third thing is just the culture. Imagine that Long has been live for 2 months, and the first 3 or 4 weeks were pure pain. Literally, the OG holders of AI and a couple of other assets and I were waking up every morning and fighting as hard as we could—literally, war mode every day—because we didn't have some coordinated launch with KOLs or big holders, or even Long itself. We just did everything organically and kind of cracked our own PMF.

Yeah.

Nate Banish

But the thing with FOMO is that I saw AI almost going to die. I think it went into the $1 million or $2 million range.

To $1.3 million, bro. It tapped $1.3 million.

No, man. That coin he's up big on hit $1.3 million in August. That's how low it went.

That's insane.

Yeah, yeah. But wait—I saw it crashing out after I already understood that this was a crazy, generational asset. I saw it crashing all the way to $200,000, and I was like, “Okay, let's put skin in the game and prove to people that we can build those real, sustainable, long-term assets.”

So I bought on FOMO. I literally bought with $777. That's a lucky number—just 777. From there on, it was history, I think. The cool thing is, people think I launched AI, but it was actually a really cool random dude who made a lot of money from the NVIDIA fees. Now it's in CTO mode, and the fees just go to the vault.

There were so many crazy organic things that happened with this asset. Anytime I'm talking with other teams that are deploying on Long, they're like, “Man, we didn't know it was possible to reach those valuations and this liquidity without having bundles or supply control.” They're just blown away. This is the narrative validation that I think we created with AI, and now we've unlocked it for more assets on Long.

What I think is so interesting about you—and I'm kind of realizing it in real time—is how much value you think it adds that you're winning in public. You're an amazing trader in public. You're 5th on this leaderboard, and you have 150,000 followers native to this social trading app. How many followers do you have on Twitter?

I have 20-something thousand.

What the fuck? 20K. You have almost 10 times as much of a following on this app. It's all because of your ability to trade successfully in public. You're up $6 million all time. You're number 5 all time on an app with millions of people trading on it.

Basically, my point is: is there any better way to market your product on Long than by doing this?

Nate Banish

There is no better way. I'll tell you more than that: I saw this strategy literally when Long launched. I think it was back in October. I already thought, “Okay, this is the actual best way to market your product.”

Yeah, I think setting an example by being doxxed, talking about it, being very authentic and transparent, and showing that—imagine I'm waking up every morning and, hypothetically, I have 5 or 7 million on the app. I literally don't care about that.

Are you the number-one doxxed trader? I'm looking at Dumb Crayon Eater, Unipcs, and PointFarm. They're all undoxxed, right? You're the number-one doxxed trader.

Yeah, I think so. But, to be honest, Dumb Crayon Eater probably had the most impact on its success.

That's my alt, by the way. I'm just showing it—the jig is up. My alt is Dumb Eater.

Yeah, if Dumb Crayon Eater is hearing me, I really tried to find out who he is, but I want to say that I respect him so much. One day, when he reveals himself, I'm going to give him equity in Long or something.

He's the GOAT.

That's hard.

Awesome, man. I know you guys have a lot of other features of Long that you're focusing on. You have a partnership with Lighter as well, correct? Can you tell us a little bit about what LongX is and how that works?

Nate Banish

I think it was pretty common on the token launchers on Solana, but pre-IPO stocks are pretty large, right? It's a great category. When I'm looking on Hyperliquid or TradeXYZ, we see that a lot of the activity goes through those pre-IPO markets.

With Lighter, essentially, what we're doing is that we can tap into every perp position and every perp market that they have there. That includes things like NVIDIA 3× long positions, but also pre-IPO perps for OpenAI and Anthropic.

We figured out a permissionless way in which we use ZK proofs to essentially control, from a Robinhood contract, a Lighter account fully permissionlessly. It's not like we have some backend worker who's doing that; it's fully permissionless. People can actually do a lot of cool arbitrage with that.

The most successful release was pre-IPO pairs, in which people can pair with an OpenAI-type spot ERC-20. We're just wrapping the position; you kind of have TVL there, or total deposits. We're wrapping the perp position, and then people can just pair with that as a normal ERC-20.

So it's quite powerful. It's not just about single assets. You can eventually pair with almost anything, like different ETFs or theses. Imagine, I don't know, Leopold is coming into our platform and he wants to build his own kind of basket of assets that he's very bullish on and enable other people to pair with that. That would be something that's possible.

I don't know if it's the biggest killer feature there, but it's another building block, I think, for what you can do with RWAs and those custom capital markets.

Can you explain, I guess, for people who don't necessarily understand what the denominator is—if the numerator is whatever meme or coin it's paired with—when that's doing well, how that impacts the other asset? And is there a way that you can pair it with pair trades? Say I wanted to go long Zcash and short Bitcoin, and that's the ZEC/BTC pair. Could that be a denominator also? Have you guys thought about doing that?

Nate Banish

That's cool. For the second thing, we definitely can do it. For example, if it's available, a long Bitcoin or whatever, or short it, you're putting both of them in the same account and then you're wrapping them, and that would work. It's actually a good idea. Maybe I will do it, and we will call the first basket Ansem Picks or something like that.

Yeah, cook on that, bro. That's a good idea. I just gave you a really good idea. It's a good idea.

Nate Banish

Yeah, it's a good idea. And I think those pairings can be very cool.

Now, about the equities and how it works, I want to give you a good example. This is usually what I'm using. Imagine that right now NVIDIA is at $200, and I can stop the entire activity on Robinhood for 2 days or something like that. We have the same TVL on AI and so on.

After 2 days, I'm resuming the activity, and let's say NVIDIA went up all the way to $400. So it went up by 2×. The first trader who would actually sell back their AI or would try to buy AI through NVIDIA would get the actual denominated price in USD at 2×. So your AI would be worth 2× on the first swap.

This is happening 24/7, so it's a subtle compounding effect. Sometimes it's very correlated, sometimes it's not, which is also a cool part. We had 1 week before the earnings report that was the first 7 days in which NVIDIA went down since 2022. So the stock went down, but AI was able to grow.

This is where I always use the example that AI is almost like an on-chain BlackRock. They're just constantly buying, compounding more and more absolute units of shares, and this is what gives them the status of asset allocators and gives them this entire leverage.

Just thinking about those stock pairs almost like a maxi vehicle, almost like a Bitcoin-maxi vehicle, in which you can compound more and more of the stock ownership and you're taking a net-long position on the stock, is a very powerful mental model for thinking about how value can eventually accrue.

Very cool. You spoke a little bit about—I know “board seat” is a great slogan for AI—but what it refers to is the ability for AI holders to actually have a real board seat as NVIDIA shareholders. Vlad has talked about how they want the tokenized stocks to have the same properties as regular shareholders. Is that actually possible? Could AI get so big that it holds so much NVIDIA that you guys could impact some decisions at the actual company?

Nate Banish

You know, I will give a very bullish, almost delusional point of view, but—

It's fun. It's okay.

But I'm very confident about that, and I think many other great holders are, too. I think AI will probably become one of the largest crypto assets that we've ever seen. I think the top 10 is possible. Doge was at $88 billion, so I think it's realistic.

In that case, you can almost think about it as an on-chain ETF for NVIDIA. It will compound so much liquidity, and obviously we have a kind of fixed, locked LP, but we can always lend, and other people can always add to it on top of that.

For example, we started establishing a sell wall that also compounds more NVIDIA into the pool. It's dynamic, right? You can always expand that and set up more and more liquidity in the same pool. Hypothetically, I think it's definitely something that can happen.

It will require some adjustments, but literally today, Yoan from the Robinhood team announced that they added a new multiplier. Those stock-token contracts that Robinhood is using are fully upgradeable.

At one point in time, if Robinhood and, let's say hypothetically, Long can collaborate on that, we would want to delegate through a pool—or, let's say, through just holding AI—some voting rights. That would be possible. There is no strong technical limit to why people wouldn't be able to literally vote on NVIDIA through their AI holdings.

That's crazy. That's fucking sick, bro. That's one of the reasons—and shout-out to you for calling out the MemeFi slogan. It's one of my favorite phrases that I've come up with this cycle. But I think it can actually have real impact.

It's something in crypto that doesn't have a ceiling because it's never existed before. I think some of the best trades in crypto are these things that are being done for the first time. That's why DeFi did so well with Ethereum in 2020 and 2021. That's why memecoins went crazy last cycle when they were first being defined as a category.

I think that's why a lot of the MemeFi stuff this cycle is going to continue to do really well. I'm with you there.

Nate Banish

Yeah, I agree with you. Just one note: this is something that I'm telling all the teams, because we're talking with a bunch of teams and trying to support them.

AI has a very unique, super-liquid narrative. This is something that works well with AI for multiple reasons, but I'm seeing so many crazy case studies online. For example, Boner.

I think we got to the point that the CEO and founder of the company behind it, which is a publicly traded company worth $8 billion, is almost the main KOL of the asset at this point. I feel like we'll be very close to starting to see that.

I'll never forget that one day I woke up in the morning and went on a call with the Boner team that same day. I went into Yahoo Finance, and they had a headline saying it had become one of the biggest, and they couldn't explain why.

It was literally just after the launch of Boner, and I was like, “Man, they don't understand that probably the reason why it became so viral is because we created so much viral activity through X.”

So this is where crypto is becoming powerful. Right up until now, maybe we had the AI meta, in which we were just accruing reflexivity from whatever Clanker was doing. But there are so many public companies out there that desperately need more fast-paced marketing and coordination to create mindshare and awareness, which is what crypto is so good at.

Imagine there are 5,000 different public companies above $1 billion. Crypto is the default for this, right? We have millions of assets, and everyone is competing for attention. This is a meme fight for me, right? You’re able to create this environment that is very good at generating mindshare and activity.

With LON, we’re able to compound that into liquidity and deeper and deeper stuff with all sorts of flywheels. But the main value accrues from alignment with the stock, right? With actually providing value to those public companies and potentially also the stakeholders, right? Anyone is just trading Hims, or I don’t know, SpaceX or Micron.

I think that’s going back to the point of the final meta, right? When you are introducing something external—it’s not just about us making up narratives, but it ties into the real world and people can find it valuable—I think we’ll start seeing public companies and those retail Web2 trader communities coming and willingly onboarding themselves to create those pairs or support the biggest stocks out there.

Hey, you are fucking cracked, brother. You’re the epitome of what it means to be super tapped into what’s going on in crypto right now. I think this conversation was super important and super informative. Hopefully, the chat was listening and taking notes. If you weren’t, go revisit the VOD, because your finger is so on the pulse. Your trading success is indicative of that, and so is what your product is doing.

You talked about how you were early to the stock-pair thing. You came to that consensus and developed that thesis way before the rest of the market did. You did the same thing with social trading and identified how important building a platform on an app like FOMO would be in marketing your product—or just anything that you want to do in the future.

Proving yourself to be a legitimately good trader in the market, which I fully agree with, and being early to both of those things in September 2026 is pretty fucking impressive. What’s your next call, brother? Where do you see things going? What should we all be waking up to?

The stock-pair thing, as far as locally and in our bubble and in this industry, the ship has sailed on that. We’ve all swallowed the social-trading pill at this point. What is something people haven’t discovered yet that you’re looking at and excited about?

Nate Banish

Yeah. So this is a little bit of alpha. I came to this decision kind of lately. Now, when you’re going into the web app, it’s cool, right? You can launch it, the back end is great, and the UI is fine. It’s good for discovery, but we decided—and we’ll move very fast on that—that we want to double down and build an iOS-native app for launch.

Wow.

It will be completely different. It’s not going to be like FOMO. It’s not going to be like Pump.fun’s mobile app. It’s not going to be remotely similar to any type of trading app that we’ve seen so far. The focus will be on curation, on almost building this new form factor for trading stocks, because it’s kind of a little bit like that. We have so many cool ideas that we just need to implement in the right way.

And distribution-wise, right? Again, PVE is not about me trying to take flows from cool apps or projects on Solana or even on Robinhood. PVE is about me, LON, and our holders making the pie bigger. We want to build our own unique distribution. We want to find the people who’ve never traded in crypto, onboard them into the space, and this is how everyone is going to win. I think we can execute on that.

What’s the fucking ticker? Because I’m looking up LON. There’s no ticker. There’s no point.

There’s no ticker yet.

Well, luckily for me, I was slamming that mid-show as well because I’m fucking— it’s just silly season. Fuck it. I don’t know.

Fuck, man. We’ve got to talk. Sick as fuck.

We’ve got to talk to you after. Fire. Have you told anybody else that? Have you dropped that alpha anywhere else? Is that new?

That’s new. That’s new. No one knew about it.

Market Bubble, baby. Market Bubble breaking.

Yeah, I’m giving—

Breaking news. You’re cracked, bro. You’re cracked, bro. We love you.

Appreciate you having me on the show. Come on next week. Come on every week. Replace me as the fucking— The pleasure, bro.

Thank you so much, guys.

And yeah, never stop believing. We are going to keep pushing every day. I don’t care if it’s a bull or bear market. We will bring the bull market, whatever you want to call it. There is so much liquidity out there. We can get—

That’s it. Epic. Thank you so much, guys.

Thank you so much, brother. Bye.

All right, chat. It's been Banks and Market Bubble every Thursday at 1 p.m. PST on all platforms. We'll be here at the same time next week. Appreciate you guys for having us. Take care.

Thank you, bro. Appreciate you. Later.

Yo, he’s an absolute crackhead in the absolute best way. He’s a beast. That guy’s a fucking animal. Wow. That was sick. That was a great founder. That was my favorite founder we’ve interviewed so far.

Yeah. He’s cool, bro. He’s locked in. He’s—

He’s the epitome, bro. When I think about—

He’s had this vision way before it was even popular, by the way. VCs turned him down on his original idea of pairing stocks and shit. I saw it in something else he was talking about, too. He just kept to it and stuck to it. He even said before that his AI coin was trading at $1.3 million. It popped up to, like, $20 million, then sold off to $1.3 million.

There are all different ways, obviously, to capture value—the AI stuff, et cetera—but I’ve historically been pretty good at fucking betting on people like that dude.

He’s locked in.

Don’t fade him. Follow him on fucking Twitter. Follow him on whatever the fuck else he’s on, and listen to what that guy has to say, because he is cracked. And the accent, too. It’s funny because it’s like a little smokescreen. You know how it goes: You’re talking to somebody who’s not American, and you’re like, “Okay, where’s this going? Where’s this guy at?” Then you’re really listening to what he’s saying, and you’re like, “Oh, this guy’s a fucking genius.” It just adds to the flavor and adds to the archetype. I don’t know—for me, I loved it.

The little background was sick, too. Where the fuck was he at?

Who knows?

That’s what’s crazy.

That fool—I don’t even think he’s real. I think he’s AI, maybe.

Imagine he’s an AI fucking persona.

He’s actually like 10 agents building shit.

Yo, that’d be fucking sick.

That’s going to be what crypto looks like in the future.

I don’t think we’re going to do a post-show today. We have an event to go to. Obviously, we’re live in person—you can see my hand in his frame. I think we’re going to end the stream here, right? That’s what you want to do. We’re going to end the stream here. We kind of put this show together at the last minute. Production crushed it. We did a great job here. I feel like that was an awesome conversation, and I’m fucking fired up.

Make some fucking money.

I hit a fucking 30-ball binker on the show today. Today was fucking epic, chat. Epic. W’s in the chat. W show. I really appreciate you guys. This is fucking awesome, man. This is awesome. We’re really just getting started. We need the “orangey, just getting started” sound thing. We need that.